Speculate
is a game of company management and business decisions. You start the game with
control of one “player company” and a majority shareholding in one of the
“trading companies” plus cash in the bank and a friendly bank manager who’ll
lend you more when you ask.

The
game is about where you invest your money, what deals you make with the other
players, and how you run the companies you control. The idea is to make money,
lots of it, and then some more. If you make more than everyone else then you’ll
win. Your target is a million, and you’ve got to get there first. Honest
dealing and fair trading are optional.

Making
a million in Speculate take around thirty turns. If only real life was so easy!

Player
Companies

There
are fifteen player companies and up to fifteen players to run them. Your player
company is who you are in the game. There are no shares in the player companies,
which are always 100% controlled by their owners.

The
player companies mainly deal in shares, but they can also deal in commodities.
They can’t manufacture anything, but they can do everything else.

The
player companies that belong to any dropouts or “dummy” players continue to
operate in a sensible way. The non-player companies are an important part of the
game, as they take the place of the “market” and “bank” simulations in
the old version.

Trading
Companies

There
are fifteen trading companies. These vote to select a managing director from
among the players, and the MD writes the business plan for the company, so the
control of the trading companies can change from turn to turn.

The
trading companies mainly deal in commodities. Each has one to three production
lines. Each production line can produce a single commodity, and consumes various
other commodities in the process. The stuff you need for one company will be the
same stuff that’s manufactured by another. If you can put the two together
then you can dodge the costs and uncertainties of trading on the open market,
which is a big advantage.

Companies
pay wages to the staff that operate the production lines, and pay extra for
hiring and firing to change their staff levels or for temporary staff when they’re
needed.

On
top of production costs are finance (bank loans and overdrafts), advertising and
storage costs, plus the cost of setting up import and export deals.

Company
profits can be retained for investment or paid out to the shareholders as
dividends.

Service
Companies

There
are ten service companies whose shares can be bought and sold by the rest.
No-one controls the service companies, and they can’t deal in either shares or
commodities themselves. They make their money from the services they provide to
everyone else, as the costs paid by the player companies and trading companies
provide the income of the service companies.

One
company deals with hiring and firing staff, and another with supplying temporary
staff. Others handle imports and exports, advertising, construction and the
storage of surplus stocks.

The
stock broker and commodities broker take their profits from the difference
between the buying and selling prices in their respective markets, while the
bank makes money from interest payments.

All
of which are about as difficult as falling off a log, so the service companies
all make money and pay good dividends, and their shares are good value.
Different companies are more or less profitable at different stages of the game.

Share
Dealing

Shares
are traded direct between the companies on the open market. Priority between
buyers and sellers is decided by the prices offered (the lowest price among the
sellers is matched with the highest price among the buyers).

Share
prices rise and fall with supply and demand as well as with the bid prices
offered by the players.

Orders
to buy and sell remain in place from turn to turn, except when you change your
instructions. This means that potential trading partners can see what you’re
offering and decide whether to offer something in response.

Each
turn the shareholders in each company can combine their votes to force a change
in the managing director for next turn.

Share
issues can be used to create extra shares, which the company sells to raise
money. Unsold shares (held by the company itself) always support the current MD
in votes for control, so share issues can be critical during takeovers, but once
these shares are issued they’re always offered for sale - so to maintain
control under attack you’ll need to put up your own money (and lots of it).

Commodities
Market

Commodities
are also traded direct between the companies on the open market, with priorities
decided by the prices offered by the buyers and sellers. Prices change with
supply and demand as well as bid prices.

Consumer
demand varies with the economy and works through the market in the normal way.

Companies
buy and sell commodities by setting the stock levels they want to maintain and
the prices they’re willing to trade at. Each turn the company tries to buy or
sell to bring their actual stocks to the level ordered.

You
can also import commodities from outside the market. Imports cost extra to set
up and the prices are fixed (they don’t rise and fall with market prices).
Exports can be used to sell commodities outside the market in the same way (with
the same extra costs).

Each
commodity has a production cost, which is the wages of the staff that operate
the production line. Companies can recruit permanent staff, who are cheaper but
need to be paid whether you’ve got work for them or not.

Any
companies can trade any commodity they hold direct to another company (these are
called “gives” and “gets” as these are the actions ordered by the two
companies and matched in order to make the trade). These are critical to setting
up a reliable network of suppliers and trading partners.

You
start by waiting for a new game, or by taking over an existing “standby”
position where the previous player has dropped out. You may have to wait a while
for a new game to start, but standby positions and “short handed” games are
normally available very quickly. One option is to take one of these to learn
your way around the game while you wait for the list to fill. Once started,
games normally run with two-weekly deadlines (so you've fourteen days between
turns).

This
version is a complete rewrite of the game and software. It’s based on
Speculate I, and at first sight it will look quite similar, but it works in
completely different ways. We think it should work a lot better, and be a lot
more responsive. We’ve added lots of responses that tell you why things
happened as they did, rather than expecting you to guess.

The
game is a lot bigger. We’ve expanded it from fifteen companies to forty.
Thirty of the companies can deal in shares (previously there were ten) and
thirty can deal in commodities (up from fifteen). Twenty-five have shares that
can be traded (instead of fifteen).

The
trading companies are the same fifteen as in the old version, but in this game
they can also buy and sell shares. The same limit on buying shares applies
(twenty per company per turn) so the more companies you control the greater your
buying power on the stock market.

Competing
bids are resolved by price, which you decide for yourself. Trades are direct
between buyers and sellers instead of being limited by the contents of the
market pool or the expected demand in the market simulation.

An
essential change in this version is in the order things happen in the turn. The
buys and sells of commodities are done together, late in the turn after
production. If you’re going to obtain your supplies on the open market then
you need to do so the turn before you need them.

That’s
important, so the point in the sequence where you get to stare at your game
report and decide what to do is after the most critical and variable part of the
process.

In
this version, when you don’t get what you want from the commodities market, as
you often don’t, you get to do something about it (because gives and gets, and
imports, are still at the start if the turn order). In the old version you’d
see the rest of your turn in chaos and your production disrupted due to the lack
of supplies.

Under
the new system you can search for alternative supplies from other companies, and
talk to other players to see if they’ve got some to spare. If that fails, then
you can still get what you need (expensively) from imports.

How
to Join

To
join Speculate II you'll need to send your name and address along with £5.00
(payable to Ab Initio Games). This covers the cost of your rulebook, setup and
first three turns (or five turns if starting in a standby position).